Keneally was 25 when he joined Zappa’s final touring band in 1987 and has since become a notable band leader in his own right. Like Havel and Groening, he regards Zappa as a singular creative force, who — by always marching to the uniquely intricate beat of his own drummer — inspired others to follow suit.

“Frank routinely took people in his bands and got them to excel and do things that, previously, they never thought they could do,” Keneally said from a recent tour stop in Chicago.

“So, for someone like Havel — whose every moment was dedicated to figuring out: ‘How do I improve my circumstances, and my country’s circumstances, and move beyond them?’ — Frank’s music hammered away at the fact that the status quo was not ideal, and that you could do better in your everyday life.”

The first statue of Zappa was unveiled in 1995. It is displayed in a major city square in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, another former communist country where Zappa’s freedom-celebrating work struck a major chord.

“He was unique,” said Rimas Morkumas, a professor of film at the Academy of Arts in Vilnius.

“No other rock star came to Moscow on a bus with a full recording studio, during Gorbachev’s time, and invited anybody who wanted to come and be recorded. We bought Zappa’s albums on the black market, because they were banned (by the Soviets). He was revolutionary, and he helped break down the wall (of the Iron Curtain).”

In 2010, the city of Baltimore — where Zappa was born — also put up a statue of him, on a street now known as Frank Zappa Way. The statue was donated by the same Lithuanian sculptor who created the bust of Zappa displayed in Vilnius.

Defender of free speech

Such honors probably would mean little to Zappa, who was driven by his passion for music and free speech, not a desire to create a legacy.

“He was a staunch defender of the First Amendment,” said Gail Zappa, his widow and the mother of his two sons, Dweezil and Ahmet, and two daughters, Diva and Moon Unit. “I’d like people to remember that, because Frank liked to say: ‘Democracy used to be our greatest export.’ ”

A proud nonconformist from an early age, Frank Zappa enjoyed tweaking the mores of straight-laced society in general and authority figures (especially politicians) specifically. He abhorred drug use, except for the nicotine and coffee that fueled him as he spent up to 20 hours a day composing and recording in the basement recording studio of the Zappa family home in the Hollywood Hills. He headed his own record company, the better to maintain meticulous quality-control of his music, and had his own merchandising company, whose operations were carefully supervised by his wife.

“I happen to like orchestral music just as much as I like rock ’n’ roll and R&B, but you can’t earn a living making orchestral music,” Zappa told this writer in a 1984 U-T interview. “America won’t allow it. If there’s one thing that can be learned in the ’80s, it’s that if you’re a composer, you must be punished.”